Corso di laurea magistrale in Filosofia

ART (Aesthetics Research Torino) Philosophical Seminar 

Prof. Tullio Viola 

(Max-Weber-Kolleg, Erfurt)

 

October, 28th at 4 p.m.

Link

https://unito.webex.com/unito/j.php?MTID=m2b67d703b0b37adcfa9eadfd6e63144f

 

 

Edgar Wind on Symbols and Memory. Pragmatist Variations on a Warburgian Theme

 

 

The talk will deal with the German philosopher and art historian Edgar Wind, a pupil of Ernst Cassirer and a first-rank figure among the collaborators of Aby Warburg in Hamburg. I will focus in particular on Wind's texts about symbols and cultural memory from the early 1930s, and highlight the connection these texts establish between Warburg's ideas and the pragmatist philosophy to which Wind was exposed in the late '20s. I will argue that Wind's interpretation of a typical Warburgian problem, namely the idea of a "polarity" of symbols, takes up a quintessential pragmatist focus on habit as the mechanism that lets us understand how expressive gestures develop out of practical actions. I will then show that Wind used the idea of a mnemonic power of symbols to fine-tune the pragmatist conception of thought and action as a permanent oscillation between doubt and belief. Interpreted along these lines, Wind's symbol theory invites a comparison to the other great pragmatist aesthetic of the early '30s, namely John Dewey's book on Art as Experience.

 

Tullio Viola is junior research fellow at the Max-Weber-Kolleg für kultur-und sozialwissenschaftliche Studien in Erfurt. His work centers on the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century thought, with a focus on north-American pragmatism and its relation to various European strands of social and cultural philosophy. His first monograph, Peirce on the Uses of History, will come out in October 2020 with De Gruyter.

 

 

 

ART (Aesthetics Research Torino) is a periodic philosophical seminar organized by the Department of Philosophy and Educational Sciences of the University of Turin and the PhD Program FINO.

The ART Board
Coordinators:
Prof.Alessandro Bertinetto (University of Turin).
Prof. Federico Vercellone (University of Turin).

Members:
Dr. Paolo Furia (University of Turin).
Dr. Lisa Giombini (University Rome 3).
Dr. Gregorio Tenti (FINO Doctoral School).
Dr. Alice Iacobone (FINO Doctoral School).

ART addresses different topics of the contemporary debate in Aesthetics: philosophy of beauty, philosophy of the arts, theory of sensory experience, philosophy of image and imagination, and history of aesthetics.

ART is supported by:
Centro Interuniversitario di Ricerca sulla Morfologia Francesco Moiso (CIM)
Centro di Ricerca Interdipartimentale di Logica, Linguaggio e Cognizione (LLC)
Centro Studi Arti della Modernità

Centro Studi Filosofico-religiosi "Luigi Pareyson"
Laboratorio di Ontologia (Labont)

 

ART is sponsored by: 
Italian Society for Aesthetics (SIE) 
European Society for Aesthetics (ESA)